Thus the vocation of the baptized person is a simple thing: it is to love from day to day, whatever that day brings, in this extraordinary unity, in this reconciliation with all people and all things, in this knowledge that death has no more power, in this truth of the Resurrection. It does not really matter what exactly a Christian does from day to day. What matters is that in whatever the Christian does it is done in honor of the triumph of Christ over death and, therefore, in honor of his or her own life, given by God and restored to each in Christ, and in honor of the life into which all people and all things are called. The only thing that really matters is to live in Christ instead of death. William Stringfellow ☀
jesus dojo
I’m not going to “boycott” Chick Fil A but I’m certainly not willing to give my business to a sham operation that tries to wear a mask of Christianity. There is nothing about Chick Fil A that makes it any different than McDonalds or Burger King; it is a company like any other. Yet when it claims to be “Christian” that’s when I ask my questions. Really it doesn’t matter, there are plenty of Americans wed more to some vision of their country and their civic religion rather than the meek Jesus of Nazareth. The Civic Religion of America is a whore that drinks shed blood until drunk and bloated. One day it will be tossed off and trampled by the Beast it rides. May all gays be not misled by this moralism, but come and take up a yoke with King Jesus for He brings life. He brings fulfillment and peace and in this shambling mass called Church, of apostate and true, find a seat and sit under the Master’s feet. Chick Fil A and the Delusion of a Nation ☀
In Jesus’ day, the religious lawyers used to meals to pronounce moral judgment on their neighbors. They ate with those they deemed to be keepers of Moses’ law and shunned those they considered to be sinners. Tax collectors, shepherds, adulterers, drunks were all considered to be unworthy dining company. To eat with the unrighteous was to endorse their behavior.
So forgive me if the boycotts and the “Appreciation Day” both evoke déjà vu. We’re using Chick-Fil-A to draw clear lines over who our tribes are. We’re discovering which people share our views of family and politics. We’re discovering who the Sinners are, who we’d rather not break bread with. Truthfully, the wrangling whether to eat or not eat at Chick-Fil-A is not interesting or skillful. We’re all falling into dusty, tribal meal rituals traceable all the way back to the Book of Genesis.
Jesus, on the other hand, found a far more interesting way to make a point with meals. He used meals to communicate his radical love for the moral misfits. The Gospels are filled with accounts of Jesus eating with Sinners: People who made careers by stealing from others, people who worked in shady occupations and people who even ignored God’s rules about the use of their sexual organs. He ate with them all. By doing so he communicated that a Heavenly King wanted to extend his protection and Lordship to these people, knowing full well who they were.
Eating with the moral misfits also communicated that Jesus enjoyed them. He loved their smiles, their ideas, jokes, and dreams. He was for them.
If there’s one thing people should notice when they see us followers of Jesus, it should be our love: for each other, for our neighbor, even for our enemies, for the world. Instead people gravitate to the Dalai Lama to find unconditional love. We in Jesus are meant in him to live in the realm of grace and truth, which Jesus it is written was full of. It is not that for the Dalai Lama it is only love, love, love. To be fair he talks something about what that means. Nor are we to be in competition against the Dalai Lama, trying to outdo him in his good points. That is not the point. The point I am trying to make here is that there should be no competition between truth and love. In Jesus they are indeed bound together, so that we must be faithful to the witness of Jesus, but we must do so with a love that loves others to the end, even as Jesus did. And loves them sacrificially to the point of giving our lives away for them, the way of Jesus, the way of the cross. That is what the Christian life is, and anything short of that falls short of the Christian life, indeed of Christ himself. truth versus love ☀
We used to look for evil to judge, evil to name, shame and blame. But that was an easy thing, so easy that we now find the whole exercise rather boring, childish, and small-minded. It was also an ego-flattering and prideful thing, placing us in a godlike position. We now wish to see without that arrogance, without the air of superiority or supremacy. Now as we learn to behold the good, the world is bathed in a gentle luminosity of compassion instead of a harsh light of analysis, inspection, and judgement. Before we looked for flaws, which gave us an excuse to reject, but now we look for goodness, which gives us reason to respect. Instead of looking for dangers to flee and fear, we look for possibilities to pursue and encourage. We turn from evaluating to valuing. We grow from faultfinding to something far bigger and better: beauty-finding, beholding, seeing in love, seeing with God. Brian McLaren ☀
A student from Arizona in my world religions class in my evangelical seminary told me that he would never give a cup of water to an illegal immigrant because it is against the law in Arizona. Whether or not it is against the law in Arizona, it is not against Jesus’ law to give a cup of water to such a person. In fact, it would be against Jesus’ law not to give the cup of water to this neighbor, this fellow created in God’s image. Where did my student learn to think this way? From reading his Bible? From hearing sermons of this kind? He didn’t even struggle with his conviction, at least not outwardly. What would Jesus do? What would he have us do? Jesus tells this scholar (me) and that student’s pastors back home to go and do like the illegal Samaritan did and cross customs and boundaries and borders that keep people apart and care for the neighbor in need. If we do so, not only will they live, but also we will live. As Jesus tells the religious leader, so he tells us now: “Go and do likewise” (Lk. 10:37).
If, as Christians claims, the story of the Bible is important to us, then we shouldn’t be so worried about foreigners; we shouldn’t be so afraid of immigrants. After all, the story of the Christian gospel centers on a man named Jesus — or, as we called him in my Hispanic family, Jesús: the one who was born on the migrant trail, moving from place to place, born to parents who did everything they could to protect him from Herod and his government, parents who even defied the will of Herod and snuck away under the cover of darkness, crossing into Egypt without proper documentation — sin papeles, as we would put it today. Called to Welcome the Stranger ☀
I think that reading the Gospels for what they’re really saying threatens to upset and destabilize our church community dynamics that have become predictable and comfortable. Contemporary Christians—evangelicals included—are too threatened by the Gospels to read them for what they’re actually saying. Tim Gombis (via slacktivist) ☀
I am waiting for someone to write part three of this trilogy, A Year of Living Like A Follower of Jesus. But don’t look at me. No way. I mean, can you imagine. If I tried doing that for a year—or for six hours—well…I’m getting a stomach ache just thinking about it.
And I don’t mean all that stuff you know you’re supposed to take figuratively—like cutting off your hand or gouging out your eye if they cause you to stumble. I’m talking about all the stuff that you know Jesus meant literally. The stuff he actually expected his followers to do if they wanted to be a part of his movement, what he called the Kingdom of God.
Serve God without drawing attention to yourself;
Give your possessions to those who need them, even if you do, too;
Bless people who flat out hate you and want to destroy you;
Don’t defend yourself at the drop of a hat;
Don’t stand in judgment over others at the drop of a hat;
Respond to cruelty with kindness;
Truly believe that people who absolutely creep you out are of infinite worth, and then act like it;
Don’t worry—about anything;
Control your anger and make peace with others wherever you go rather than perpetuate conflict.
If I tried doing even the first three on this list, I would pop a vein in my head before breakfast and collapse.
Unlike most of the commands in the Old Testament—don’t eat camel meat, keep your bull out of your neighbor’s property, banish someone with crushed testicles, and be sure to collect a dowry from your virgin daughter’s seducer—the things Jesus talked about are actually commanded of his followers, with, if I may guess, the expectation by Jesus that they would form the pattern of our daily lives.
Those who take the time to read Coming Apart should also pick up William Julius Wilson’s When Work Disappears (1996), a study of the “new urban poor.” While Murray places the blame squarely on changing mores, Wilson traces the shifts in inner city family life to the loss of working class jobs and the disintegration of neighborhood social organization. In a review of Coming Apart, economist Paul Krugman echoes Wilson’s argument, noting a precipitous drop in the wages of male high school graduates after 1973. In the absence of good jobs, blue collar men have been less likely to marry. Other sociologists have pursued a similar line of inquiry, exploring the cultural side of poverty without blaming the victim.
Following Jesus, we’re called to manifest the beauty of an outrageously impractical life that would sooner be killed than kill. So, while we can affirm the right to life as a noble political value, as Kingdom people we have to revolt against the temptation to this noble value above the value of self-sacrificial love in order to manifest the beauty of the Jesus-looking Kingdom. Greg Boyd ☀
God is not on the side of Dutch-speaking people versus those who do not speak Dutch; on that he is even-handed. God is not on the side of football players versus those who do not play football; on that, too, he is even-handed. But the poor are different. It is against his will that there be a society in which some are poor; in his perfected Kingdom, there will be none at all. It is even more against his will that there be a society in which some are poor while others are rich. When that happens, then he is on the side of the poor, for it is they, he says, who are being wronged. He is not on the side of the rich, and he is not even-handed. Nicholas Wolterstorff ☀
The kingdom of God is the rule of weak forces like patience and forgiveness, which, instead of forcibly exacting payment for an offense, release and let go. The kingdom is found whenever war and aggression are met with an offer of peace. The kingdom is a way of living, not in eternity, but in time, a way of living without why, living for the day, like the lilies of the field – figures of weak forces – as opposed to mastering and programming time, calculating the future, containing and managing risk. The kingdom reigns wherever the least and most undesirable are favored while the best and most powerful are put on the defensive. The powerless power of the kingdom prevails whenever the one is preferred to the ninety-nine, whenever one loves one’s enemies and hates one’s father and mother while the world, which believes in power, counsels us to fend off our enemies and keep the circle of kin and kind, of family and friends, fortified and tightly drawn. John Caputo ☀
Christianity has consistently been open to pro-feminist movements, but this has resulted neither in a fundamental egalitarian transformation of Christian institutions, nor in a mass exodus of disaffected women. The current wave of “resignations” fits squarely into a 2000-year-old tradition of tension over gender and spiritual authority; if proponents of patriarchal forms of religious organization do not feel particularly threatened by the alarm bells Henderson has rung for them, it is because historical precedent encourages complacency on their part. After all, their predecessors always managed to hold on to power. “The men of the right” have found, in every generation, a substantial number of Christian women who considered the limited roles and secondary status allotted to them to be quite comfortable. It is certainly easier to execute simple, circumscribed tasks such as meal preparation than to shoulder the responsibility for major policy decisions. But every generation has also witnessed rebellion and discontent. Patriarchy’s Persistent Bastion? Religion ☀
The Works of Mercy (via slacktivist)
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